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Sarah Ferguson presents Australia's premier daily current affairs program, delivering agenda-setting public affairs journalism and interviews that hold the powerful to account. Plus political analysis from Laura Tingle.
MAGDA SZUBANSKI, ACTOR: Oh, thank you very much for having me, Sarah. SARAH FERGUSON: You were surprised by the outpouring of love from the community when you announced your cancer diagnosis.
Do you understand now how much you and the characters you created, not only entertained Australians but also made us feel better about who we are. MAGDA SZUBANSKI: It was a pretty graphic example, I have to say and demonstration of affection. I was really blown away by it.
And at such a dark time to feel that just tsunami of love was, was an extraordinary feeling and because sometimes you feel when you do comedy, it's a sort of a lightweight thing and, you wonder how much it counts really. But it's interesting when times are tough, it really counts. And, yeah, that, that love that we all put into our work, it came back. So it was beautiful.
It was really beautiful. SARAH FERGUSON: Now, I want to talk to you about your book because first of all, the decision to write it, you're confronting a very serious illness. You're choosing to write a difficult or at least a demanding book about your mother, your family, trying to understand your mother's complexity, her love, also her poison, the poison in her as you put it. Why did you take on such a demanding task at that time?
MAGDA SZUBANSKI: Well, I started it before that. I'd started it a good few years before that and I, you know, I think it's very hard to explain. I think I sort of understand myself through writing, I've discovered. I mean, I've journaled for years and years but when events, big, big events happen, it's just like the, the words and the phrases all come into my mind like iron filings to a magnet.
I can't sort of stop it. And so, I suppose that process really sort of started immediately during mum's death, death and after her death.
I'm really glad that I did it because especially I think, because the book is so much about woman's work, you know, that emotional labour that particularly, I know a lot of men do too, but particularly women do, of caring and helping someone to die, that being my mother and being the carer for her and the complex things, because she was a complex woman. She, she could be mean and she could be beautiful, you know?
And, so I was going through that journey of I'd cared for her, and then by the time I was sort of, you know, getting towards finishing the book, I, of course, became the one who had to be cared for. So, yeah, so often my mother and I, our experience are like bookends of one another's lives, so that was very much the case with that.
SARAH FERGUSON: Let's talk about that because some of the answers to understanding your mother came in a, in the discovery of a shocking story from her childhood. I'll let you explain it, but do you wish you could have asked her about it too? MAGDA SZUBANSKI: Oh, yeah. It devastates me that I can't.
It devastates me I can't. Now I understand cancer in a different way. I can't speak to my dad about what that was like. But what happened, my sister is 10 years older than me and as often happens in families, you know, different people know different bits of information or are privy to different stories.
And it wasn't until two years after my mother died, my sister and I were discussing George Pell and how, how much we loathed the Catholic church's Melbourne response to sexual abuse of children. And my sister said, "Well, of course, after what happened to mum.
" And I said, "What do you mean? What happened?
" And she said, then she told me when my mother was eight years old back in Scotland, she was playing soccer with a bunch of boys, and she was better than they were and they raped her to punish her. And I said to my sister, you know, I was devastated, absolutely devastated because suddenly it was like, you know, all the fights and all the troubles and everything or any pain or love or everything that had been there between us, any hurt that mum had inflicted, I always knew there was something.
I knew it was something of that nature as well. It all just sort of came crashing in on me and I just looked back through all of the history and went, "It just all makes sense.
" And, and I don't know. And this is the thing with my mother. She, there are some things that are sort of beyond therapy. I don't know.
I'm sure she could have been helped somewhat. MAGDA SZUBANSKI: I don't know, possibly. You know, possibly. I mean, I, there was also the thing that I kept secrets because I knew I was gay, you know?
And so, I kept a distance from my family. That's one of the tragedies of my generation of gay people is that we either were forced out of our families or had to keep a huge emotional distance. So we didn't have, we were incredibly close, but there were some things we just didn't talk about.
If she'd died a bit later, when I then understood what had happened to me and had the language to understand it, I might have been able to help her more. I didn't have the concepts really or the language to be able to help her and maybe she didn't know it was quite safe. So probably smart on her part. MAGDA SZUBANSKI: Oh, direct line from my mother.
She, and it's why when Christopher Hitchens says, women aren't funny, it's like, well, you should have met my mother and her, her sisters. SARAH FERGUSON: Give us a break. MAGDA SZUBANSKI: You know, like, my Auntie Mary, this is a great story, sitting in the kitchen, this is in the ‘50s, they're all being very polite, you know. And you know how in Scotland they have the pulley with the laundry washing hanging on it?
And Auntie Mary's sitting there, and a huge pair of Uncle Bernard's jocks fell into her lap. And without missing a beat, she just went, "Just my luck. Empty.
" And, and quick as that and that's what they were all like. My mother, her sisters, her cousins. So, you know, they, my mum was way funnier than me. She was, they were just witty and it was immediate, you know?
And, but I think, honestly, I've been thinking about this more and I really think as much as anything, the gift, and this definitely comes absolutely from the Irish line, because she said, "Won't you know what my father was like?
" He was fun. He was good fun because he, you know, was renowned for his temper, but also funny and witty. And mom was fun, you know? She could, going to the hospital with my mother was fun.
Like the nurses adored her, you know, she was charming and funny and for her it was a bit of an outing, you know, she loved it, you know. She was, she was really good fun. Yeah. SARAH FERGUSON: I'm just saying 10 out of 10 or whatever the score is for a Scottish accent there.
And I'm, I've got, I've got, I've got standing in this matter and that is very, very good. MAGDA SZUBANSKI: Oh, when, when you've got a Scottish parent and you hear someone else do a Scottish accent, you're like, "Don't, don't, don't.
" It's like when you hear a bad Aussie accent. It's, it's unbearable. SARAH FERGUSON: You say, again, I'm quoting in the book, you say, "Cancer has changed me. I have less to lose, more to do.
" So what is it that you want to do? MAGDA SZUBANSKI: I want to really, one of the very first things that happened when I was diagnosed, I felt this incredible, within me, it was like this tidal surge of love for family and friends and the world and people and, and just life, you know, this incredible sense of love for life.
And life can be hard, you know, I'm not a Pollyanner about it, but, uh, and I just sort of feel like I want to spend time with the people I love. I want to have a lot of fun. I want to do beautiful, meaningful, fun things but also, you know, I'm very concerned about the way the world's going at the moment, and I think social cohesion is extremely important.
And that's why sometimes we have to be less fighting our corner and that was what I tried to do, and I learned that from the people who were conducting the marriage equality debate, how to give ground, you know, how to concede sometimes and find the common ground because just as you firmly believe in what you believe in, there is someone with a diametrically opposed view, and there are people also who all they want us to do is argue so it will destroy democracy, you know?
So I think it's really important that those of us who can get along, I'm describing myself increasingly as a, a militant moderate, because there's an old thing, it's like a sort of twist on the, Pareto principle in economics that 20 per cent of the people are responsible for 80 per cent of the output productivity. In social work, we used to say 20 per cent of the people are responsible for 80 per cent of the problems.
Well, the other 80 per cent of us need to put our shoulder to the wheel and make sure that that common ground that we can agree on is not wrenched away from us, because they'll pull us over the cliff, the extremists of either side. They're the same person. So that's a, that's a really big concern of mine.
SARAH FERGUSON: You never, you never failed to surprise Magda for this great book and for all your gifts and everything that you've given us. Thank you for sharing some time and your thoughts today. MAGDA SZUBANSKI: Oh, thank you. Good.
Well, you can't say not. In remission after undergoing treatment for a rare and aggressive form of blood cancer, Magda Szubanski is releasing a memoir. It details her health battles and exploring the actor and comedian's complex relationship with her mother. She speaks with Sarah Ferguson.
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